What Are You Eating Under There?

There hasn't been much going on this week. Alison was in Halifax many days in a row, which bummed me out somewhat. But she came back Thursday night and we went out for dinner with some of my coworkers Friday night. That was nice. Then yesterday morning we went to the farmers' market for the first time in awhile. Bought some mealy apples and soggy potatoes and hung out with the wealthy hippies. We also stopped in at the Harvest Gallery, where they're having a small but inspiring printmaking show.

I'm still on popular internet not-quite-as-much-time-as-Facebook-but-still-a-lot-of-time-waster Twitter. The idea of it is to entertain and inform people who are interested enough to subscribe to your updates, by answering the question, "What are you doing?" in 140 characters or fewer. As a joke, I thought it would be funny to start an account for Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now. He is all for detaching from the unimportant distractions of one's constantly changing "life story," in order to tune into and reidentify with the stillness which underlies all change, thereby trivializing its details. This is somewhat paradoxically achieved by focusing in on one's experiences in the present moment, to the exclusion of judgments about those experiences, which would be based on comparisons with an imagined future or a remembered past, neither of which actually exists at this moment.

I admire his ideas very much, but thought I'd poke a little fun at him and simultaneously at Twitter and its distracting ilk by having him do updates from time to time that said things like, "Typing." Or, "Looking at a computer." I figured if anyone started "following" him, they'd soon see that it was a joke, have a chuckle, and move on. Well, he now has over 100 followers (as opposed to the 16 who follow real, non-joke me), some of whom have been expressing joy to have found him on there and to be reminded daily of his teachings. It's making me feel a little guilty. How can I tell them it's supposed to be a joke? Some of them don't even appear to speak English!

The only other possibly significant thing I can think of to tell you about is that I've been reading and loving William James's Varieties of Religious Experience. It's the kind of book that I feel may very well change my life. I wonder how it's taken me till now to read it, but at the same time now seems to be the perfect moment for it. Forgive the presumption that you might be unfamiliar with such a modern classic (it was written in 1902), and let me just say that it's the first book to treat religion as a subject that might be studied scientifically, without thereby discrediting the validity of the phenomenon. And he is reconciling so many concepts I feel like I've spent my whole life trying to reconcile — science vs. religion; objective truth vs. subjective revelation; happiness vs. the necessity of hardship; transcendence of rational thought vs. the obligation to reason in morality — that I get all worked up and have to start reading out loud every time I pick it up, much to Alison's annoyance.

What about fiction, you ask? Good point. I still haven't had any contemporary novels recommended to me that might fill the need opened up by David Foster Wallace's suicide. I saw a collection of short stories in a bookstore yesterday that looked like it might be good: A Circle Is a Balloon and a Compass Both by Ben Greenman. Anyone read it or heard anything about it? Jeff, I guess I'm looking at you here. How about novels? Anyone?

- Andrew

P.S. Oh yeah, of course I'm still working away at promoting you-know-what university for prospective students. We've got a big new campaign rolling out soon. It won't be as exciting as this, but I think it's still pretty compelling.

P.P.S. Retraction: I also wanted to mention, apropos of nothing, that I really regret putting that She & Him record on my top ten list for 2008. I don't know what I was thinking. I had to take it off my iPod because it's frankly kind of irritating. Hope no one bought it on my account. The David Byrne and Brian Eno, on the other hand, is still getting plenty of play around here.